Target Of The Orders (Book 3) (8 page)

Heads whirled to face him.

He was in shadow, but that wasn’t enough to hide him.

A month ago, perhaps even a day ago, he would have wilted or maybe played dumb by ignoring the accusation and hoping it would die away. Maybe a week ago he would have cast a spell and run. But Garrick felt something different now. He wanted people to know the truth. This was who he was now. He wanted to make things right. These people did not deserve to be toyed with. They deserved to know what was happening, and at that moment, Garrick felt he was finally in the very place he was meant to be.

He stepped from the shadows so that any in the tavern could see him.

The crowd gasped.

Stools screeched against the floor, and voices fell silent.

“You are right, sir,” Garrick said striding to the middle of the room. His tall form and his wiry body gave him an aura of intensity. These people would listen to what he had to say.

“The orders have bonded together, and they are hunting Toreans. I wish I could say things were going well for our independent house, but I can’t. I can, however, forewarn you that when the orders finish with the Torean House, there
will
be a magewar like none you have ever seen, and if it is not stopped now it
will
change the plane forever.”

“Demon!” the woman said. “You killed the boy!”

“It was an accident,” Garrick said. “Purely an accident.”

“Devil!” her husband joined, standing protectively in front of his wife and holding a talisman before him.

The room erupted.

Life force stirred within the chaos. Garrick pushed it back, though, and raised his arms as if to cast a spell.

“Stop it!” he yelled, his voice deep and powerful. “Just stop it.”

The room settled into an edgy and uncomfortable quiet. Fear crossed every face around the room.

“I am no demon. If I were, I would have already supped on your souls. I am merely a man, though. I wish no one harm.”

“What of the dead in Caledena?” the ranger asked.

Garrick turned to the bald man.

“If you’re going to tell stories about me, I suggest you get them right. Only a few men died in my raid last night, and those few died only because they gave violence to the boy who now travels with me. And before you feel for them, you might consider the thousands of people the orders slaughtered in Arderveer a fortnight prior.”

The room was now quiet except for the crackling fire pit and city noises that drifted in through the open windows.

“Come here, Will.”

The boy complied, and Garrick put his arm around Will’s shoulder.

“The boy and I are going to leave, quietly and peacefully. Make of that what you will. But heed my warnings. It is important you listen to the news this man brings, and it is important you make up your own minds. Koradictine and Lectodinian rule will be upon you before you know it, and it will be only through people like the Torean mages of the Freeborn, or maybe through independent people like me and like you, that Adruin as you know it may be saved.”

The crowd moved away as Garrick led Will to the doorway.

“Be careful, wizard,” the bald man said from afar. “News of this speech will travel.”

“Thank you,” Garrick said.

Then he took Will by the shoulder and guided him out of the tavern.

The nighttime air was cool, and the streets still busy.

“The orders will know where we are in the time it takes a man to run across town,” Garrick said as he led Will to the stables. “So we had best get on the move.”

“Are you a demon?” Will asked.

“No, Will,” Garrick replied. “But sometimes it feels that way.”

“Are you afraid?”

He looked at the boy and felt a noose tightening around his neck. Until recently he thought that noose was looped only around his own neck, but he felt differently now. If planewalkers were involved, that meant this was a big noose, a noose that was looped around the necks of every person on the plane. That included the necks of every Lectodinian and Koradictine mage on the plane, too, though they may not know it.

Alistair, with his penchant for isolation, would have bristled at this news that kept falling around him like pieces of a single puzzle. “There’s always a bigger demon,” Alistair would have muttered as he tweaked up a warding spell.

Garrick thought about planewalkers, about Arderveer, and about Elman waiting for him in Caledena. He thought about his god-touched magic, and he wondered where Darien and Sunathri might be. The orders were coming for him, and if he stayed with the Freeborn he was putting his friends at risk.

On the other hand, as long as Garrick was alive the orders had a common enemy, and would focus less on the Freeborn. Perhaps he was, therefore, the last barrier to full-scale war.

It was a strange thing to be both a target and a security blanket.

“Yes,” Garrick finally replied to Will. “I’m afraid of a lot of things.”

Chapter 13

"That didn't go as I had hoped," Garrick said to Will as they rode through the city.

The night was growing dark.

“What are we going to do now?” Will said.

“It’s too dangerous at the Inn,” Garrick replied. “So we’ll find a place out here to pass the night.”

“Out here?”

Will’s expression of fear told Garrick all he needed to know about the boy’s opinion of sleeping in the alleyway of a big city.

“I'll watch over you. You’ll be fine, I promise.”

“And we’ll see Darien tomorrow?”

“Maybe.”

The questions were beginning to annoy him again. “We’ll go to the university,” he said. “And if Darien wants to join us, he’ll find us there.”

“The university? What are we going to do at the university?”

“We’re going to try to learn as much as we can about the orders, Will. Where they came from, who they are, and where they might be today. Consider it your first lesson in magic, all right? Does that sound fun?”

“Yeah!”

Garrick has happy Will couldn’t see his expression from his seat in front of him.

He wasn’t going to tell Will that he needed to learn more about the orders because he had decided to go mage hunting. And he wasn’t going to tell Will that he was going to find the boy a new place to live, and that Garrick was going to leave him there while he went off on that hunt.

There are things the boys of a dozen years or so don’t understand, and Garrick wasn’t ready to face any of those things tonight.

“But for now we’re going to find you a place to sleep.”

Garrick knew this city well, and figured they would be safest in an alleyway, or maybe against a shore dock. He selected an alley, and propped a discarded crate against a brick wall to give Will a place to sleep. Kalomar stood at the end of the alleyway, hitched loosely to a post.

With his life force draining, Garrick did not sleep. But as he huddled against the wall using discarded fabric as a blanket, he slipped along the edge of lucidity and dreams played at the edge of his senses.

Darien swept his blood-bathed sword toward the neck of a burly creature. The thing’s head tumbled to the ground. and as it rolled forward its features grew more human and more similar to Darien’s. When it came to a halt, Garrick saw it was Thale, Darien’s brother …

Sunathri sat on a throne of polished stone. She twisted and pulled against restraints made of black and purple vines, but her efforts served only to draw the vines tighter. A snake slithered at her feet, twining slowly up one of the chair’s legs. She couldn’t speak, but her eyes were wide with terror. Garrick pulled a knife from his belt and sliced at the straps, freeing her just as the serpent buried its fangs deeply into her neck …

As Sunathri screamed, another serpent wrapped around his leg, its mouth gaping open, fangs prepared to strike …

Garrick screamed himself awake.

A man was there, squatted beside him and shaking him by the ankle.

Garrick scuttled away, preparing magic.

“Calm yourself, Garrick,” the man said. “If I had designs to kill you, you would never have woken up.”

The voice was deep and familiar. It was the bald ranger from the inn.

He breathed easier. His back hurt where the rough brick had bitten into it. His muscles ached from sitting on hard ground.

“How do you know my name?”

“Stories about you are growing more numerous than you may be comfortable with,” the man replied. “You’ll need to be sharper about where you sleep in the future. An alley is too easy a target.”

A dark body lay nearby.

Garrick nodded at it.

“Your work?”

The man grinned, his teeth white despite the shadows. “Lectodinian by the look of the brand.”

“Thank you,” Garrick said.

“I’ve never been too fond of the orders.”

“I’m glad of that.”

The bald man took a crab-step over to the body, then reached around its waist to remove a belt and a sturdy dagger. He handed them to Garrick. “You’ll need something other than your magic to protect you.”

The blade was short and stubby—a weapon balanced for throwing. He slipped it into his belt loop.

“What do you want for your services?”

“Nothing.”

Garrick gave him a quizzical glance.

“I figure you’re on the right side, Garrick. At least you talk a good game, eh?”

“Thank you. I hope I can repay it someday.”

The bald man glanced to the end of the alley. “You best be moving on,” he said. Then the man was gone.

Will was irritable when Garrick roused him, but he got moving quickly at the idea of a dead body a few feet away.

“Where are we going?” Will asked as Garrick lifted the boy up on Kalomar’s back.

“We’ll think of something.”

He glanced to the east. Morning was still a considerable time away.

They were probably safer if they got out of town.

That’s when he knew where he was going. It would be just for the evening, he told himself as he turned Kalomar to the west, and toward the sparse woodlands Garrick was so familiar with.

Arianna lived there—Arianna, her family, and her quiet life. He thought about her, and about the one kiss they shared. He remembered the panic he felt as he cradled her bleeding head, the look of horror on her face when she saw what he'd done.

Arianna may never want to see him again, but he was drawn to her.

He wanted to see her one last time.

Will lolled in the saddle. His legs gave an involuntary dream jerk.

And even if Arianna wouldn’t see him, perhaps Arianna’s father would take the boy in. He could always use another hand in the fields, or maybe Will would be better at dealing with the alchemy of the smithy shop.

Garrick smiled despite himself.

If nothing else, the wood should be a safe place for the boy to sleep tonight.

It wasn’t until later, as they picked their way through the streets of Dorfort and into the dense trees, and as Will’s head lolled back against his chest, that Garrick realized he had never even asked the man who had saved them for his name.

Chapter 14

Elman grinned coldly as he watched Garrick and the boy ride through the woods. He was right! Garrick had come to the girl’s home. The thought brought him more than joy. He
needed
to be right this time. To have been wrong would have been unthinkable.

He sat on his horse, waiting.

The wooded air was cool and smelled of earth and damp wood. A half-moon hung high in the cloudless sky. The call of insects grew louder. It was a shame the boy had to be involved. But that was not his doing.

He cast a brief spell to send word to the others.

No prisoners.

As expected, Arianna’s house was dark and draped in the shadow of trees. Hickory smoke wafted from the chimney, reminding him of simpler times when Arianna’s family had accepted him as one of their own.

Garrick framed the boy with his arms, and felt his head roll with the horse’s motions.

“Are you all right, Garrick?” Will said in a sleepy voice.

“Yes. I’m fine,” he said.

And he was.

Coming here had been the right thing to do. If he hadn’t come here he would always wonder about her, always have doubts. But just seeing the place was enough. He didn’t belong here anymore. He had changed, and it was time to turn the page. He would return tomorrow, though. He would return to see about leaving Will in such a proper place to grow up.